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Post by snoggle on Apr 29, 2015 21:52:40 GMT
Has the night bus contract performance regime changed in the last year or so? I know a lot of schedules have been adjusted, some with higher PVRs. The reason for asking is looking at some of the performance graphs for various routes shows measurement only starting back in April 2014 even though the contract did not commence then.
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Post by 6HP502C on Apr 29, 2015 23:22:48 GMT
Yes, everything changed in April last year. Before then, drivers only had their conscious to stop them from bunching, punching or bombing it along to the other end of the route after passing Tottenham Court Road/Trafalgar Square. Now, they're supposed to to run on time throughout. Some routes were also reclassified as high frequency, but only if they both run at 4+ bph on weekdays and >4bph on weekends. The N207 escaped this, presumably because it runs at 2bph between Hayes and Uxbridge on weeknights.
From observation, I don't know how well it's going down on certain routes, particularly those where buses suffer with huge disparities in bus stop dwell times. I regularly see N155s bunched in pairs, sometimes threes on weekends. Some drivers on that route like to take it easy and really converse with the drunken passengers, whilst others drive at a normal speed.
The N35 remains a low frequency route, but also suffers from bunching on weekends. Heaps of extra running time keep being thrown at the route, but it hasn't improved matters greatly. It's bizarre really, when the buses bunch together, in many cases don't split up again.
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Post by vjaska on Apr 29, 2015 23:57:19 GMT
Yes, everything changed in April last year. Before then, drivers only had their conscious to stop them from bunching, punching or bombing it along to the other end of the route after passing Tottenham Court Road/Trafalgar Square. Now, they're supposed to to run on time throughout. Some routes were also reclassified as high frequency, but only if they both run at 4+ bph on weekdays and >4bph on weekends. The N207 escaped this, presumably because it runs at 2bph between Hayes and Uxbridge on weeknights. From observation, I don't know how well it's going down on certain routes, particularly those where buses suffer with huge disparities in bus stop dwell times. I regularly see N155s bunched in pairs, sometimes threes on weekends. Some drivers on that route like to take it easy and really converse with the drunken passengers, whilst others drive at a normal speed. The N35 remains a low frequency route, but also suffers from bunching on weekends. Heaps of extra running time keep being thrown at the route, but it hasn't improved matters greatly. It's bizarre really, when the buses bunch together, in many cases don't split up again. In regards to the N35, is there a case for a new night route to follow part of the route. An N45 springs to mind, maybe King's Cross to Brixton, relieving the N35 between Elephant & Castle & Brixton with added support from the N133 north of Elephant. |
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Post by manuel528 on Apr 30, 2015 19:07:56 GMT
Yes, everything changed in April last year. Before then, drivers only had their conscious to stop them from bunching, punching or bombing it along to the other end of the route after passing Tottenham Court Road/Trafalgar Square. Now, they're supposed to to run on time throughout. Some routes were also reclassified as high frequency, but only if they both run at 4+ bph on weekdays and >4bph on weekends. The N207 escaped this, presumably because it runs at 2bph between Hayes and Uxbridge on weeknights. From observation, I don't know how well it's going down on certain routes, particularly those where buses suffer with huge disparities in bus stop dwell times. I regularly see N155s bunched in pairs, sometimes threes on weekends. Some drivers on that route like to take it easy and really converse with the drunken passengers, whilst others drive at a normal speed. The N35 remains a low frequency route, but also suffers from bunching on weekends. Heaps of extra running time keep being thrown at the route, but it hasn't improved matters greatly. It's bizarre really, when the buses bunch together, in many cases don't split up again. In regards to the N35, is there a case for a new night route to follow part of the route. An N45 springs to mind, maybe King's Cross to Brixton, relieving the N35 between Elephant & Castle & Brixton with added support from the N133 north of Elephant. The most busy part on N35 is from Old Street to Elephant & Castle, because traffic from Old street roundabout to Livperpool Street and night life in Shoreditch, sometime you maybe stop in Shoreditch for 5 min to fill up all people ahead south. The other thing make it bunch because it give too much running time from TCR to Old Street roundabout, easy to get 5 min early and hold back but if you ontime before Old Street roundabout, you will be 5-10 min late in Shoreditch High Street stop because traffic and minicab parking. So it always happen bunching from Shoreditch all the way from 1am- 3am. |
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Post by vjaska on Apr 30, 2015 19:17:46 GMT
In regards to the N35, is there a case for a new night route to follow part of the route. An N45 springs to mind, maybe King's Cross to Brixton, relieving the N35 between Elephant & Castle & Brixton with added support from the N133 north of Elephant. The most busy part on N35 is from Old Street to Elephant & Castle, because traffic from Old street roundabout to Livperpool Street and night life in Shoreditch, sometime you maybe stop in Shoreditch for 5 min to fill up all people ahead south. The other thing make it bunch because it give too much running time from TCR to Old Street roundabout, easy to get 5 min early and hold back but if you ontime before Old Street roundabout, you will be 5-10 min late in Shoreditch High Street stop because traffic and minicab parking. So it always happen bunching from Shoreditch all the way from 1am- 3am. It's always busy in Brixton too as people make their way between Clapham Junction, Clapham Common & Brixton as the nightlife in those places rivals Central London. |
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Post by 6HP502C on May 1, 2015 3:32:03 GMT
On weekends, the route is crowded way beyond saturation point between Shoreditch and Elephant and Castle and still rather busy to Camberwell. The rest of the route could cope with 4 bph, helped out by the 242 and N55 at the north end and the 37/345 at the south end. I also think the time has come to think about giving the 37 a third bus on weekends. This Overground railway is doing a grand job of creating and connecting trendy nightspots, but when it stops for the night, people need to get back home! Clearly the N35 isn't coping at the moment - it needs a minimum of 6+ bph and I'll wager there's quite a bit of suppressed demand. There are countless possible solutions, things like extending the 344 and N133. Personally I liked the idea of creating a brand new N196 from Shoreditch to Norwood Junction, with possible extensions to Dalston and/or more likely, Croydon Town Centre. The idea was to address multiple issues on the night network; - N35 and N133 crowding north of Elephant
- New links in time for night tube at Brixton
- Relieving the crowded N68 by taking on some of the demand from the Norwood to Herne Hill section
- Plugging a night network hole in South Norwood, giving it a useful service to places like Croydon and Brixton
I'd propose a new route because the N35 has a strange, meandering structure. Faster buses are available from the West End and Elephant into South London, specifically Camberwell, Brixton and Clapham. 24 houring the route would require some structural change by actually changing it into a 78 at the Shoreditch end. But if that was done, it would create a problem at Old Street. The solution to that would then be give the whole 21 a 24 hour service of some description, the Monument/London Bridge interchange is quite popular already, enough do it for the N47. How a 24 hour 21 would be sorted I have no idea. The N21 is busy and has recently had a frequency increase, plus I don't particularly like the idea of night routes being withdrawn from Trafalgar Square without replacement. Maybe the N35 ought to be legged, 4bph Tottenham Court Road to Brixton and 4 bph from Shoreditch to Clapham Junction. |
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Post by 6HP502C on May 1, 2015 3:55:14 GMT
The most busy part on N35 is from Old Street to Elephant & Castle, because traffic from Old street roundabout to Livperpool Street and night life in Shoreditch, sometime you maybe stop in Shoreditch for 5 min to fill up all people ahead south. The other thing make it bunch because it give too much running time from TCR to Old Street roundabout, easy to get 5 min early and hold back but if you ontime before Old Street roundabout, you will be 5-10 min late in Shoreditch High Street stop because traffic and minicab parking. So it always happen bunching from Shoreditch all the way from 1am- 3am. Precisely - the route keeps having more running time thrown at it, but it's poorly distributed at best. There are huge variations in dwell times at every bus stop between Old Street and Liverpool Street. Running times within that section also vary as a factor of minicabs clogging up the road, people stumbling into the carriageway and the odd lane closure. I don't really understand how padding out the times from Tottenham Court Road to Old Street helps anything, when there is no traffic and next to no demand along that section in that direction. On some nights, there are more problems than usual in that area and it royally screws up the bus service, leading to the Clapham Common to Clapham Junction section being sacrificed. It appears the running times have been averaged out to take this into account. All it means is that on most weekends, it's a stagger throughout. In the 6 months following the April 2014 changes, almost 91% of buses left TCR on time, which dropped to less than 75% in the problem area and gradually increased as buses progressed until Clapham Common. In the other direction, only 84% of buses leave Clapham Junction on time. This magically increases to 88% at Camberwell and I don't think it's because they have the best part of 30(!!) minutes to do it in - it's done at the expense of serving Clapham Junction. Given this aggregated all data including weekdays, I expect these figures would be be significantly lower if weekday data was excluded. That a reliability scheme went in in June 2014 appears to be statistically insignificant, suggesting factors other that the running times alone are impacting the route's ability to run on time. I can believe that too, formerly being a regular user on the route. Some drivers deliberately drive at 10mph the whole way, or punch other buses to reduce their workload. If every driver challenged everyone who piles on through the front and back doors without paying, the stats would be a lot worse. Only some of them do. I don't advocate fare evasion in any way, but I understand why people do it - goodness knows how long it'll be until a bus turns up with space to accommodate them. I wouldn't be averse to the idea of it being reclassified as a high frequency route. On weeknights, the running times would have to be reduced and redistributed into the stand time to prevent early running. |
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Post by vjaska on May 1, 2015 12:14:00 GMT
On weekends, the route is crowded way beyond saturation point between Shoreditch and Elephant and Castle and still rather busy to Camberwell. The rest of the route could cope with 4 bph, helped out by the 242 and N55 at the north end and the 37/345 at the south end. I also think the time has come to think about giving the 37 a third bus on weekends. This Overground railway is doing a grand job of creating and connecting trendy nightspots, but when it stops for the night, people need to get back home! Clearly the N35 isn't coping at the moment - it needs a minimum of 6+ bph and I'll wager there's quite a bit of suppressed demand. There are countless possible solutions, things like extending the 344 and N133. Personally I liked the idea of creating a brand new N196 from Shoreditch to Norwood Junction, with possible extensions to Dalston and/or more likely, Croydon Town Centre. The idea was to address multiple issues on the night network; - N35 and N133 crowding north of Elephant
- New links in time for night tube at Brixton
- Relieving the crowded N68 by taking on some of the demand from the Norwood to Herne Hill section
- Plugging a night network hole in South Norwood, giving it a useful service to places like Croydon and Brixton
I'd propose a new route because the N35 has a strange, meandering structure. Faster buses are available from the West End and Elephant into South London, specifically Camberwell, Brixton and Clapham. 24 houring the route would require some structural change by actually changing it into a 78 at the Shoreditch end. But if that was done, it would create a problem at Old Street. The solution to that would then be give the whole 21 a 24 hour service of some description, the Monument/London Bridge interchange is quite popular already, enough do it for the N47. How a 24 hour 21 would be sorted I have no idea. The N21 is busy and has recently had a frequency increase, plus I don't particularly like the idea of night routes being withdrawn from Trafalgar Square without replacement. Maybe the N35 ought to be legged, 4bph Tottenham Court Road to Brixton and 4 bph from Shoreditch to Clapham Junction. The 37 really needs the extra bus and could with a frequency increase during the day as well. An extra bus for the 37 should also give some help to the N35 between Clapham Junction and Brixton as it's extremely busy along that section too. |
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